Keeping Dance Scholarship alive
In agreement with my previous article in ‘Footloose’,
a regular reader asked for my thoughts on the possible solutions or guidelines
to “instill and motivate academic scholarship in dancers” and students of
dance. The answers, which came to mind, were both easy and difficult to
implement at different levels. But it was immediately clear that the answers
lay in a multi-tiered revamping of the way we view dance education in India.
For the positive transformation of dance
scholarship in India to take place, changes would have to be made at four
distinct levels – at the level of the government, institution, at a private as
well as individual level.
At the highest level, the government would have to take
the arts much more seriously than it does. Every year, funding for the arts
diminishes further and further. This has serious repercussions on the study and
practice of dance. It affects the incentive of people to take up dance even as
a performance art - dance as an academic study, which already has a subordinate
position in the dance education hierarchy, then has no hope. Further, the
government needs to approve or incentivize schools, colleges and universities
to give importance to dance education. This doesn't just mean that the
government merely tells all educational institutions to include dance in their
curriculum, but needs to put effort into making sure that this directive to
include dance in education is implemented properly and effectively.
At the institutional level, funding bodies and
institutional heads of schools, colleges, universities and dance institutions
need to give dance academics and theory importance. A school, for example, must
be able and willing to hire properly trained dancers and dance educators
specifically for the purpose of educating the students in the area of dance,
rather than using a certified Physics, Mathematics or English teacher to do the
job.
At the college and university level, we need to have Performing
arts departments that offer practical and theoretical modules for all of the
performing arts - theatre, music, dance. None of our major university
departments have this. The few dance institutions that have opened up in India
in the last decade also do not offer dance theory and history as a priority
subject. I conceptualized and initiated a dance history and theory course for
Attakkalari Centre for Movement Arts, here in Bangalore and I believe it is one
of the few dance institutions that now offers this kind of study into dance.
Third, there are several dance students who study dance
privately - either at privately run institutions or they attend private lessons
with a dance teacher. These privately run dance schools and private dance
tutors also need to prioritize a wholistic dance education, which includes the
history and theory of dance, at least of the dance form that they are teaching.
This also needs to happen at a larger scale. I do not know of many of these
that teach theory and history as an important and integral part of learning
dance. Most of these private educators concentrate on the practical aspect of
learning dance, and some completely ignore even the basic theoretical aspects
of dance that are integral even to the correct performance of dance.
And finally, at an individual level, dance practitioners
and students need to take initiative to constantly educate and re-educate
themselves. Just as they do riyaaz regularly, so must they
read regularly on dance, go to conferences and seminars on dance, perhaps even
organize and initiate them. A change has to take place within the very minds of
practitioners and students that makes them realize that they cannot be whole by
learning only a part of what knowing dance is all about.
To conclude, dance scholarship needs to be encouraged at
all the four levels and will need the cooperation and will of people from
varying backgrounds with varying powers to make this change. Without changes on
all the four levels – government, institution, private and individual – we
cannot hope for dance scholarship to gain the importance it deserves.
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